All Things Linguistic

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When you think of communication back in the early 21st century, you probably think of it as the beginnings of the modern phone. But you may not realize that it’s also the origin point for many words and linguistic constructions that we’re still using now, 200 years later. I’ve
been using the records at the Internet Archive to research the English of this fascinating historical era, and my research has led me to believe that we should take a more relaxed and curious attitude toward our own language changes in the 23rd century.
For example, did you know that there was a period between the 17th and the 20th centuries when English didn’t make a distinction between formal and informal ways of addressing someone? Shakespeare distinguished between formal “you” and informal “thou,” but our presentday distinction between formal “you” and informal “u” dates back only to the beginning of the internet age. How could people of this unfortunate era have had a true understanding of the Bard when they had no way to fully grasp the intimacy of the sonnets (“shall i compare u to a summer’s day / u are more lovely and more temperate”)?
[…]
So you’d imagine that early-21st-century people would have been really excited about this fascinating era that they were living in, right?

In my research, I came across so many doommongering quotes about how texting was ruining the English language, when we obviously now know it as a cultural renaissance in writing that ushered in the new genre of the textolary novel and other kinds of microfiction, not to mention creating now-classic nonfiction formats like the thread. (I drafted this op-ed as a thread myself, as any sensible writer would do, because how else would I stresstest each of my sentences to make sure they were all pithy and vital?)

As ridiculous as the fears of the past seem, when I read them, I found myself seeing with new light the fears of the present. We’ve all heard the complaints about how the youths are communicating these days — many of us even have complained about it ourselves. But what will the people of the 25th century think, looking back at our 23rd-century rants about kids refusing to say “no worries” in response to “thank you?” Won’t they be totally accustomed to hearing “it’s nothing” or its even more reviled short form “snothin” by then?
[…]
How arrogant of us to think that, amid all of the possible eras of the English language, it somehow peaked exactly one generation ago, in the 22nd century. How foolish the critics of those bygone years look in their disdain for their own century and reverence for the 20th or the 21st. How clear it is, from the perspective of history, that when we mythologize the English of a previous age, all we’re doing is creating a moving target that we can never quite hit.

We can break this cycle. We don’t have to wait until the 23rd century passes into history before we start appreciating its linguistic innovations. We don’t have to use language as a tool for demonstrating intellectual superiority when we could be using it as a way of connecting with each other.
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Gretchen McCulloch, How Can You Appreciate 23rd-Century English? Look Back 200 Years

Part of the New York Times Op-Eds From the Future series, in which science fiction authors, futurists, philosophers and scientists write Op-Eds that they imagine we might read 10, 50 or even 200 years from now.